How do you use Microsoft Power Automate in your work?

[JonL]

Hey Power Automate Community!

We are wondering, Do you use Power Automate at work? In production? 

If so, tell us a bit about it! Tell us how you use the flows, what they help achieve, and if they help make life easier!

Thanks!

- Jon

[AllanMartins]

We have been using Flow for all the automation needs that we always had, but never figured out a way to manage. From rich approval's process, to simply Sharepoint folder monitoring.

Recently, we managed put in place a simple PowerApp for sendng SMS text message to multiple recipients using Twilio, and it works incredibly fine! 3-4 steps, about 20 mins to set it up and test, and it was good to go.

Have more things to put in place, looking forward what else we could do with it.

[DionGoile]

We use flow to manage our 365 tenants allowing ease of tenant onboard, user onboard, user offboard through delegated admin all with approvals.

Also generated alerts around applied licences and management of admin users.

Away from that we use flow to monitor for backup alert failures (failures of the alerts themselves).

Much more to be added!

[JonL]

Dion,

Would you be willing to show me these flows in depth? This sounds like a great use of Flow and I would love to learn more about it.

Thanks!

- Jon

[DionGoile · Accepted solution]

Hey Jon,

Sure thing, I’m limited to my phone only until tomorrow which from then I can provide some more information about these. (I’ve started writing a blog community blog also, which I hope to finish in the immediate future)

But for the moment here is a link to a blog for flow setup to get email alerts about unused 365 emails. This is what we use in house, written and documented by my colleague Elliot.

https://gcits.com.au/knowledge-base/get-email-alerts-unused-office-365-licenses-azure-functions-azur...

Thanks,

Dion

[SmartMeter · Accepted solution]

Hi Jon, This is a little bit of a hack, but I just used a flow to translate Sharepoint cloud list data keys (a people picker into a simple text name field on the same row.) This way PowerApps filter delegation will not be broken. Without a "plain text" of the current user's name, I can't use the filter verbs without breaking delegation, and ending up with the default top 500 rows in my app. It's like a "Flow spatula" for flipping SharePoint list pancakes into a plain text index. Ugly, but funcitonal.  

[molotch]

Do you have any sort of securely verifiable log of approvals and denials in your approval process? If so, how did you acomplish that?

[paul_culmsee]

I am also starting to use it extensively, especially around empowering PowerApps. One powerful example is using Flow (via a custom connector and OpenAPI file) in PowerApps to handle photo uploads into SharePoint with metadata. This is something that the PowerApps community has been waiting a long time for, so being able to use Flow to work around limitations is very empowering... (video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mp-8B1fLrqs).

I also did the same thing for using Microsoft cognitive services. At that time PowerApps couldn't call the OCR functions from the computer vision API and Flow was used as my glue...  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0vstZ1EBaI

I am using Flow also to get around PowerApps limitations with Managed Metadata support. Instead of using the native PowerApps connector, I send data to Flow and then usde the HTTP action to talk to the SharePoint lists webservice to update managed metadata columns. Interestingly, flow cannot do this natively with the SharePoint connector, but the HTTP action is a godsend...

I am also using it for file sync scenarios (although this scenario is actually probably better served via an Azure function and PowerShell PnP. 

[Anonymous]

Hello Jon!

We are just going to use.

Can I use MS Flow between 2 separate Organizations? i have tried to add a connection to a second organization but it wouldn't allow me to pick an entity. 
What i am trying to accomplish is: When a field is updated in Organization A, go and create a record in Organization B. Is this even possible?

Thank you, Violab

[paul_culmsee]

Hiya

No you cannot do this in the way you might be imagining it, except in limited circumstances. It is possible to use Request/Response triggered flows and the HTTP action for a flow in one tenant to talk to another tenant...

A few people are doing this approach. eg: https://sergeluca.wordpress.com/2017/03/16/invoke-a-flow-from-another-sharepoint-flow-step-12-tutori...

Paul

[Anonymous]

I used to be a SP Designer guy with all the workflows and made some pretty elaborate workflows in the past. It took me a few tries to get used to this but have already sttarted to get a little silly.

1. I am currently using Flow to send out User alerts to all users in the company of different things, HR Alerts, Communications, IT User alerts... things like that. So the user only has to go to a list and fill in these fields and I have used the HTML function in the flow emails to send out notification alerts to all users.
2. I also am using Flow to manage an approval process for something internal. So users fill in a form (created using InfoPath still) and when they send it, it goes to a 3 step approval process with HTML emails. Its pretty cool.
3. Lastly, I am going to start designing flow to do approvals using DocuSign to incorporate our HR forms into a workflow setting. Still in the conceptualization stage in Visio, but looking good.

[Anonymous]

Hi!

I am here cause I am not a developer and I want to have a workflow to send out SMS to agents yet I cannot for the life of me figure out how to make it happen. I feel as if I am missing something because everytime I think I have it I don't. Please help if you can!

[nudlsoop]

Create Outlook tasks from emails tagged with "#project".

I use mostly the Outlook web client, so I have no way of dragging an email over the tasks folder like one can in the Office Outlook desktop application. Instead I forward the email to myself, edited and with the subject "New #project: ...". It's a small price to pay to avoid using Outlook on the desktop.

I'm updating the flow to use the new Office 365 Outlook webhook trigger (read: building a second Flow, as you can't really change out the trigger that starts a Flow).

[Anonymous]

I use it to monitor competitor SEC filings. It monitors an RSS feed from the SEC and if a competitor files a filing it automatically creates a pdf and inserts it into a sharepoint document library. It then notifies me of the filing. 

[bestay]

I use it extensively for personal automation, for example, sending an email reminder to pay my bills or pay rent, notifications for different channels like twitter etc. However, I can't say it would be very useful for my company, which is very entrenched in Microsoft software from Sharepoint to Lync to Office. For companies like mine, I can see this replacing a lot of internal tooling, especially with integration to software like Salesforce, Yammer and intranet options.

Kind regards,Bestazy

[malekedward]

Currently we are not using Microsoft Flow but looking at the power of Microsoft Flow with automating simple processes we are going to be looking at automating some of our ISO requirements and daily reporting functions.

[JRaasumaa]

Our business uses around 30 or so flows setup to run various tasks, mostly from within PowerApps.

Most of our Flows are designed to run On-Premise SQL procedures or send email notifications or reminders. The most recent flow we added allows us to send a Skype message to a specific department when a file they've been waiting for is uploaded (with the file name included in the message)

We also have a few flows that are used to fill the gaps in image capture and conversion from within PowerApps. Specifically we have a flow that allows us to use the Upload Image feature in PowerApps and convert, save a copy, and attach info to a SQL database about the file for future reference.

Much more Flow usage to come from us as we dig into how we can automate and simplify business procedures!

[Anonymous]

Hi Community,

We've just started using flow and for the moment utilise it for documents approval and publishing. So we have only one flow running in production.

What the flow is doing:

1. Controls QA check and approvals. Users are happy to respond right from the emails.

2. Publishes approved documents with PDF conversion as an option.

3. Logs each step in SharePoint list. The list is connected to the document library, making it available to see history for each document.

Flow contains about 60 different blocks.

[vinhta]

Do you have any sort of securely verifiable log of approvals and denials in your approval process? If so, how did you acomplish that?

[Anonymous]

Hi @vinhta,

Yes, we have.

1. Each approval/rejecting response is writing into a SharePoint list with the following info:

- Document ID

- User full name

- Response (Approved or Rejected)

- Timestamp (just a standard Create date)

2. We created a classical page with query string and filtered Log list web-parts and added an extra column called 'History details' to the document library with the following JSON formatting:

{
  "elmType": "a",
  "txtContent": {
    "operator": "?",
    "operands": [
      {
        "operator": "==",
        "operands": [
          {
            "operator": "toString()",
            "operands": [
              "[$ContentType]"
            ]
          },
          "Folder"
        ]
      },
      "",
      "History details"
    ]
  },
  "attributes": {
    "target": "_blank",
    "href": {
      "operator": "+",
      "operands": [
        "pageURL?",
        "DocID=",
        {
          "operator": "toString()",
          "operands": [
            "[$ID]"
          ]
        }
      ]
    }
  }
}

When users click this column, it redirects to the page with filtered log details.

I am happy if it does make sense.

Feel free to ask if you have any questions.

Cheers.